On Whole-Burnt Offerings

For we call a whole-burnt offering a holocaust… Yet there is a difference between a whole-burnt offering and a sacrifice, because every whole-burnt offering is a sacrifice but not every sacrifice is a whole-burnt offering. For there are many good deeds which are done as sacrifices but they are not whole-burnt offerings, because they do not kindle the whole mind with spiritual love. For those who devote themselves to the things which are of God in such a way that they still do not relinquish certain things which belong to the world, truly make a sacrifice but not a whole burnt-offering. But those who abandon all that belongs to the world and set the whole of their mind alight with the fire of divine love; these truly become a sacrifice and a whole-burnt offering to the Lord Almighty. (On the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, Homily XII.30)